Planning for COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all of us and with schools now closed (until further notice) the changes and impacts will continue for some time. It’s during times like this when you need you remember that you are part of a community of best practice, so don’t be alone. The Forum is your friendly, safe environment for sharing ideas, top tips and pitfalls to avoid. In this time of uncertainty its important that we collaborate and work together, bringing together ideas and use this time as an opportunity to learn and continue to raise standards.

Hosted on 15th January 2019 By Phil Anderson

Scheduling is much more than creating shifts and therefore the success criteria for shift design is much more than schedule fit. This module will explore the key responsibilities of a scheduler and how a holistic view is required to set measures of success. Learning outcomes include:
- What does good look like? Understand the importance of scheduling and the key responsibilities, including key characteristics of good and bad schedules.
- Define your purpose. Understand how schedules support your business strategy and its importance to customer and employee satisfaction
- Schedule fit & other measures. Introduction to different ways of measuring scheduling fit and how these can be incorporated into a more holistic framework of success measures.

Hosted on 15th February 2019 By Phil Anderson

This module provides an introductory understanding of:
- the fundamental inputs and outputs of the scheduling processes.
- the role of scheduling within the planning cycle
- the characteristics of best in class scheduling teams as evidenced through The Forum's standards benchmarking programme

Hosted on 26th April 2019 by Paul Jackson-Moss

The basis of a best practice scheduling strategy is a clear understanding of the volatility of workload and the amount of flexibility to need and can afford. This module introduces you to theoretical models and calculations to understand your flexibility need. Learning outcomes include:
- What does volatility & flexibility mean and the importance of defining these for your business.
- How to calculate the volatility of demand and amount of flexibility available
- Understanding different flexibility needs based on different starting positions, e.g. annually and daily, compared to average, compared to budget

Hosted on 8th October 2019 By Phil Anderson

Understand the benefits of taking a more in-depth view into the volatility of your supply and demand, and flexibility requirements.
- Understand the value of further analysis.
- Learn analysis techniques to measure variance
- Translate this into a practical output for flexibility

Hosted on 12th February 2020 by Phil Anderson

Once you have determined the volatility of your volumes you can start to think of ways to manage this through scheduling. The flexibility toolkit contains 18 options that you can use in your business. Learning outcomes include:
- What are the flexibility options and which can be combined?
- Pros and cons of each method and case study examples of how they’ve been implemented.
- Understanding how different tool kit options can be used strategically and tactical

Hosted on 26th March 2020, by Phil Anderson & David Preece

Make Homeworking a successful and sustainable flexibility option for your business which support your people and customers. COVID-19 has created an urgent need for homeworking, those business’s who have previously said “no”, or “not this year”, have now reacted and bought 1,000 new laptops! Homeworking is more than just working from home, this webinar will explore 10-years of best practice from The Forum along with expert advice from established homeworking provider Arise and Sensee.

- Best practice, top tips and practical case studies.
- Classic pitfalls to avoid
- How to create a sustainable homeworking strategy

Hosted on 31st March 2020 by Phil Anderson and David Preece

Discover different ways to add and increase your flexibility to meet the changing demands for your business. Learn how to prepare your colleagues and how to support them into temporary changes to their working patterns. Learn how to increase and decrease hours, depending on your need.

- Learn how other organisations have applied the flexibility toolkit
- Pitfalls to avoid and classic mistakes that can come back to haunt you
- Distinguish being tactical trials and pilot schemes and long-term strategy

This is the second in a four-part series in the Planning COVID-19 learning academy series.

Hosted on 22nd April 2020 by Phil Anderson

How is your new virtual contact centre performing? Following on from the panel discussion last month, this is an opportunity to reflect on what you’ve achieved, learn from what other organisations have done and start to consider your long-term operating model.
- Hear from industry professionals around their approach to Planning for COVID-19
- What would you have done differently?
- Start to consider your exit strategy and prepare for the future “business as usual”

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